Need Customers? The Marketing Funnel and Customer Journey are Your Tools for Success

Imagine this: it's a busy day, and you're scrolling through your social media platform of choice.

As you mindlessly scour your feed, there's one post that captures your attention. Maybe it's a witty meme, some funny comic, and perhaps a thought-provoking caption. Or maybe it's that thing you've wanted to buy for ages.

Regardless, you stop your scrolling and decide to peruse that post for a while. Maybe you check out the account, click that See More button or even head to that link.

Congratulations—you've just experienced a marketing funnel?and?a customer journey first-hand.

Marketing funnels and customer journeys are related ideas, but they have subtle differences too. But together, they form a robust backbone for your marketing strategies.

Today's blog will briefly look at both concepts and see how you can successfully utilize them together.

Revisiting the marketing funnel

The marketing funnel linearly traces a lead's path from awareness to purchase. One crucial step is categorizing leads and customers based on how they relate to the business. Usually, leads are at one of three places in the funnel:

1. Those who just discovered the business
2. Those interested but not sold yet
3. Those who are ready to buy

Knowing their position in the funnel helps keep their interest, answer their questions, and address their concerns—all instrumental in making a sale. Read our CEO's article here if you'd like a more in-depth look into the marketing funnel.

But visualizing how potential customers move through your marketing funnel is not an exact representation of how they experience the brand and its offerings. That's where the Customer Journey comes in.

What is a customer journey?

The customer journey maps a customer's experience with a brand from the first time they encounter it to the purchase. Unlike a marketing funnel, which typically is linear, the customer journey is loose, reflecting the relationship between customers and the brand.

Part of that includes understanding your customers. After collecting enough data about your customers, it's possible to create a customer journey map, which shows the sequence of steps the average lead takes from awareness to conversion. By mapping this experience, you can identify the brand's touchpoints and pain points of the target audience.

But how do you craft a customer journey map?

1. Create buyer personas.?For those in the business for a while, you might know who your ideal customer is. A buyer persona is an in-depth profile of your ideal customer—the person most likely to avail of your services or the type of person you want to cater to. Understanding this will make the customer journey clearer.
2. List your customer's pain points.?What problems does your customer have? And what do they need to solve them? That's the magic of knowing your customer's pain points. If the buyer persona understands what your customer might want based on specific attributes, the pain points give you a picture of what they?really?want. Some marketers may even integrate this into the buyer persona.
3. Identify your customer actions.?After creating your buyer personas, you can learn more about their expectations. The customer journey map comes in different stages of the buying process called "touchpoints." Think of all the steps a customer takes to interact with your brand. For example, when someone is searching for your business online and finally finds your website, you count it as an "interaction" because they've taken one action. They might then click on your email newsletters, which is another interaction. Later you'll get a chance to decide which steps are relevant. Go over your customer's activities with a fine-tooth comb.
4. Create possible solutions.?Solutions are the final element of your customer journey map. These are how you can improve your business, so customers encounter fewer pain points and have a positive experience.
5. Analyze the customer journey results.?When you know what's important to your customers and how they interact with your business, review your data every week or so to check your progress. Regularly analyzing these results shows you how to meet customers' needs better.?

Just remember that other leads may follow different paths through your sales funnel, so don't make assumptions about how they'll interact with you along the way.

How to use the marketing funnel and customer journey wisely

If funnels help businesses target leads in the stages of buying cycles, the customer journey demonstrates a lead's progression from discovery to conversion. This helps tailor your content to each potential customer and create an immersive experience across channels, devices, and more.

The best approach is to use marketing funnels and customer journey maps in tandem. When you do this, you:

• Target the right leads with the suitable marketing materials
• Make the overall conversion process more user-friendly for the prospect?

But how can you do this? Just use a marketing funnel to focus on the lead-to-customer conversion, and use customer journey maps to see how they encounter the brand along their way. Aside from giving you a clearer picture of what your customers need the most, it also helps you develop the most crucial leverage your business needs—a great relationship with your clients.